The Coatroom Below Larch House
| Site index | ORG-004Site number, not a canon code |
|---|---|
| Subject group | Independent |
| Record type | Original fiction |
Original fiction for this archive, separate from the novel's canon. Beneath a demolished hotel, a coatroom continues to accept tickets. The attendant returns each coat with something its owner has spent years trying to put down.
01A claim made late
Larch House had been a public car park for twenty-six years when Tomas Vale found its coatroom ticket in his wife's sewing box. It was a plain brass disc, warm on one side. He remembered the hotel, the dance and the rain on the evening they had met. He did not remember either of them checking a coat.
The stairwell appeared behind a pay-and-display machine. Below it stood a counter, a bell and a woman turning the pages of a paperback with no printing on its cover. She took the ticket without looking up. Beyond her, rows of coats shifted as though people inside them had just turned to listen.
She returned a blue wool coat that had belonged to Vale's wife. Its cuffs were wet with the rain from that first evening. In the left pocket he found a cinema stub, a peppermint and the letter she had started during the last week of her illness. The letter was finished.
02The item left behind
Vale read it sitting on the bottom stair. He later declined to have its contents copied into the report. He said only that he had been mistaken about something, and that his wife had apparently known he would be.
When he took the coat upstairs, it weighed so little that he checked the pockets again. His own overcoat remained on the counter below. The attendant had hung a fresh brass disc around its collar, although he had not offered to leave it.
Vale has returned to the car park three times. There is no stairwell now. He wears the blue coat when it rains and says it fits better each year. The missing overcoat appears in his dreams, growing steadily heavier on its hook. He no longer asks what is in its pockets.
Sources & reading notes
Original fiction for this fan archive, not a canonical incident from the novel.